


Kill or be killed world

by Petersolacenovak



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Titans (Shingeki no Kyojin), Character Study, I Am Depressed, M/M, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:00:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29157786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petersolacenovak/pseuds/Petersolacenovak
Summary: A more in depth look into Levi’s struggles in war. A modern war, where no Titans exist.
Relationships: Levi/Erwin Smith
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Kill or be killed world

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah

He doesn’t like being told what to do. Which is ironic, being a soldier, being a man who’s role in life is to take and give out commands to troops. Troops that he’s sending to fight until death. He vowed to serve and he vowed to protect, but that did not let his personality and standards vacate his body. 

He’s impatient and at times irrational-despite whatever front he puts forth. He is a man who relies on his instincts and has been recognized as a fighting machine with little room for error. However, he is also human and very much emotional. At times his anger speaks for him and it controls his actions no matter if he tries to suppress it.

When people tell him what to do, he can snap or snarl like a mutt that’s been beaten to hell and back. Which he is really. A mutt. One that’s struggled and starved and crawled around the streets, searching for a warm bed and someone to feed him. 

Despite whatever problems he faced back then, being a young orphan of a boy, no matter it being more than twenty years ago; he is forever unable to lose that kill or be killed ideology. He barks orders and he bites at those who don’t listen. Whoever loses the scuffle is the loser and he refuses to be anything but the victor.

When he first began fighting the horrors of war, he didn’t get along with the other soldiers. He was a closed off boy and wasn’t used to the sparkle that remained in most of their eyes. Some of them had come from luxury and upper class homes, some had never even seen struggle a day in their lives. They were only there because of the draft and had the wildest dreams of glory and winning the entire war just from a simple shot from their gun.

He scoffed at the ways they would mess around, jutting their rifles high like they were scepters and tossing dirty articles of clothing around while chuckling like schoolchildren. Although some of them were. One boy, Levi would only know went by the name; Armin, after finding the small soldier’s crippled body in a mound of rotting bullet riddled corpses. The boy was no older than seventeen when he died. Although that would not come until much later down the line, when Levi was promoted as a captain around the age of twenty six. 

When he was promoted he met Erwin Smith. The man was tall, blonde, and hardened to bone with the terrors of war. He had led an attack on the enemy just five months before Levi and he had the chance to meet and managed to kill and capture 2000 men of the 5000 stationed near them. His charge had been a massive shift in how the war had been going for them, raising morale and actually getting Levi to give the man complete respect as he shook his hand. 

When Levi and Erwin began to plan raids together and use each other’s knowledge to better themselves, a bond began to form. 

For once in Levi’s life, he didn’t care about being told what to do by another person. 

Erwin was different. He didn’t just deserve respect, he asked for it in a way that seemed genuine and forceful. He wasn’t hotheaded, but proud of who he was and what he could offer. He wasn’t unkind, but gentle and calm when soldiers broke down or someone ached for a speech to get them on their feet again. He had the patience that Levi lacked and had the righteousness of a man who deserved a spot in heaven with the angels when death would eventually come to claim his soul. 

However.

When a person begins to bond with another and their blood intertwines while their minds connect and share the same feelings and thoughts-

There is a downside. 

The downside, is that you feel pain when they feel pain. When they’re in danger of death or being shot through the chest with a bullet the size of half a pinky-you feel the absolute fear of never being able to look them in the eyes while both of you are breathing, again.

When Levi is forced to watch the man ride into battle on a horse and get his arm blown off, he can’t help but have his insides quench and scream. His systems shut down, his body goes on autopilot and he doesn’t wake back up until he’s surrounded by dead bodies and the gun strapped to his side is empty of ammo and his pocketknife is dripping with enemy blood. 

Erwin is fine and safe when he manages to make his way back to base, leading a hoard of shivering troops. They all stare at him and keep their distance, visibly more scared of him than the people who he had ripped the stomachs out of, even though they were the ones who loom over their heads in the trenches.

Erwin has only one arm when he’s sent home.

It makes sense though. He can’t even load his gun on his own, nor can he get out of bed without going lightheaded. He says it’s for the best when he’s driven away, on the road to either his home or a hidden land mine that Levi begs and pleads for the universe to not exist. Luckily it doesn’t. 

Erwin holds his hand in their final moments together, before whispering, “Find me one day” and then they’re forced to unlatch their sweaty palms and seperate.

When Levi can’t see the truck full of injured troops being sent far far away, he goes to his tent and sits. 

He thinks of Erwin. He thinks of how much longer the war is going to rage on. He thinks of how much his hand misses the cracked knuckles of Erwin’s and how perfectly it felt to touch the man’s hand. The lack of comfort and physical touch that Levi’s had in his life, makes him shake over how deeply he desires to interlock those fingers with his own one more time. 

He thinks of how brave Erwin is and he thinks about how he’s never going to see him again. The man was from England, a country that Levi doubts he will ever be able to see by the time he, himself, is allowed to go home. If the war continues as destructive as it is, there’s a chance that he may never get to step back outside of a battlefield.

He truly, truly misses Erwin as the weeks move on, but he doesn’t allow himself to break down or shed a tear until he is forced to meet Erwin’s replacement. 

It’s a young woman who he doesn’t bother trying to learn the name of, but the sight of her-a person he’d been attempting to ignore since the word was announced that the position had been refilled-makes his charge into battle that day, more ferocious than anything he’d ever displayed. He kills too many. He uses the gun placed into his hands by people who forced the human kind to break out into warfare and cuts down men and women, and anyone else in his way. 

It’s not something to celebrate. There are always living people on the other side, it’s important to remember such and Levi forces his brain to know that while it’s a dog eat dog world around him, there are still humans on the other side of mud walls that surround him and his men.

He hates having to think about the children the enemy has back home, the lives that they were also ripped apart from. 

He uses his despair from missing Erwin to fuel his revenge powered murders and he sobs in his tent for the first time in his life. 

He’s cried before. 

Like when his mother wouldn’t wake up in that grimy old bed, covered in sick and her own fluids. Or when Uncle Kenny decided to leave him in a brothel when he was seven. That had been nearly twenty years prior though and the surge of warm salty tears falling from his eyes makes him shake and shiver with a new feeling of loneliness and disgust. 

Not once had he cried since he arrived on the

vacant land around him, not even when he first witnesses a death by a gun just a few feet away from where he stood.

But the feeling of losing someone who he loves with all of his heart, breaks him in a way that he does not know how to handle. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Peepeepoopoo 
> 
> I don’t now


End file.
